


For As Long As It Lasts

by braidedbootstraps



Category: 101 Dalmatians (1961), 101 Dalmatians (1996), Disney Cartoons (Classic)
Genre: 1940s, Alternate Universe - College/University, College AU, Drabble, F/F, Femslash, Useless Lesbians, a balm for my cold lesbian heart, anita radcliffe - Freeform, cruellanita, the dual tone hair origin story, v wholesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-26
Updated: 2019-08-26
Packaged: 2020-09-27 03:40:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20401075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/braidedbootstraps/pseuds/braidedbootstraps
Summary: Cruella de Vil and Anita Radcliffe attend university together in 1947, AU. When Cruella's hair begins to turn prematurely white, it's Anita she turns to for help. A mistake in the dying process makes for an entirely different, albeit fabulous, look. The origins of Cruella's iconic hairstyle combined with wholesome Cruellanita drabble.





	For As Long As It Lasts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SeaOfBitternessAndSorrow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeaOfBitternessAndSorrow/gifts).

Anita, of course, noticed first. Her first reach towards the desk in front of hers was hesitant. She’d only meant to tap Cruella’s shoulder. Reconsidering, she instead reached forward to pluck the offending article from her friend's head.  
“Oh!” Cruella’s hand flew to the back of her head as she swivelled in her seat. Anita caught the glare of a black furnace in her eyes for a moment, before Cruella realized who was behind her. At that moments end the fire was lost in a blank stare. Cruella settled for what Anita was sure she thought a curious and disdainful look. “Anita…”  
Anita held up the single white hair between them. “Here. A stray white. I plucked it for you- sorry, Cruella, it was only because I thought you wouldn’t reach it yourself.”

Cruella’s hand drifted away from her skull. She snatched the white hair from Anitas fingers and offered a perfunctory smile. Anita returned it as fully as she felt able. There seemed nothing at all appropriate or less foolish to say, except “It’s good luck.”

Cruella let the single white hair balance on the tip of one long finger and looked at it for a moment. With a quiet puff she blew it away and blinked once or twice.

* * *

Within a month it was all anyone in the women’s dormitory would talk about. Anita listened silently to two girls from Hartford House, where she knew Cruella was staying. The three of them were carefully fixing their hair into its usual style in the second library restroom.  
“Did you see Cruella this morning?” one asked “It’s getting worse every day now”  
The other giggled. “Serves her right. Walking around like she owns the place.”  
“Well she’s not laughing now. Margaret said she heard crying this morning in the bathroom.”  
“Really?”  
Anita pulled out a paper towel loudly, and the two girls stopped talking. Drying her hands, she shuffled past them as quickly as she could.

* * *

Within two months, Anita saw for herself. Cruella been avoiding her usual place in the study hall. Anita thought she might have seen glimpses of her one or twice in the art studios, or on the train, but she'd never been sure.

  
It was all true. There was hardly any of Cruella’s dark hair left; only sad and solitary streaks of blank in perfectly white hair. Anita rounded an empty corridor to see Cruella smoking alone, leaning against the damp bricks of the old school.  
She had always been impossibly thin. This made her every move wretched, but somehow elegant. She wore a scarlet lipstick that on her otherwise bare face gave her mouth the look of an open wound.  
She turned her head to the side. Anita felt herself glued suddenly to the spot. Cruella gave her that same blank look of recognition she knew.

Anita began to feel the usual tightness in her throat that she only felt when Cruella looked directly at her. But Cruella folded her arms as if, for once, she were attempting to constrain herself. “...Help me.”

* * *

The record player needle bounced along the inside of the vinyl disc and began its soft crackling. “Play it again” Cruella said as she stubbed out her third cigarette of the evening. Anita leaned over and reset the needle.  
The first notes of Eartha Kitt swayed into the room and Cruella smiled at Anita through the mirror. The two of them sat on the floor of Anita’s bedroom on two of her spare sheets. Anita had found herself helping Cruella lift her vanity mirror onto the carpet, and the two of them had quickly emptied Anita's shopping bag between them. Now sitting on the cabinet, on the bed and even in Anita’s hands were various boxes of dye she had brought that very afternoon.  
Two half empty glasses of merlot were in each of Cruella’s hands; She held Anita’s for her as she worked. Anita mused, with a sly flush appearing in her cheeks, that alcohol was forbidden in all of the women's dormitories. Then again she supposed, so were visitors after six.

They had waited another month, until Cruella’s hair was completely white. She gave Cruella a promise, time and place. She’d then gone straight into town to buy the necessary things. She had only wondered briefly why she was doing this, and had settled on simple charity. Anyone would have done it, surely. Even a stranger.  
Anyone might have let Cruella break her window lock and come into her room after hours, bringing a bottle of wine beneath her coat and a truly wicked grin. Any two women that barely knew each other may have pulled out the record player and two dusty glasses from beneath the sink.

Cruella was unspeakably changed with what was admittedly a very good merlot in her hand and an eagerness that Anita thought, truly, had always been there. If you asked for it, perhaps unwittingly. And she was a little drunk and giggling her way through painting Cruella’s hair black in sections. Every now and then Cruella would sip from her own glass and murmur a little of the lyrics. If Anita had to lean forward over Cruella’s shoulder, sometimes her forearm would brush Cruella’s cheek. This would go unremarked for once, and unresisted.

The music came to a gentle stop. Anita reached for another box of hair dye. “Oh. Oh no.”

Cruella drained her glass and looked over her shoulder “What?”  
Anita was bent to the floor, looking desperately beneath her bed. When she turned around, her face was almost as pale as Cruella hair. “...There isn’t anymore.”  
“What do you mean there isn’t anymore?” Cruella asked carefully, and Anita’s face started to crumple.  
“Cruella I… I didn’t buy enough hair dye. There isn’t anymore.”  
The two of them looked dismally in the mirror. Half of Cruella’s head had been dyed an indigo black. The other half remained a cool white.

After spending the next minute and a half frantically turning every empty box in the room inside out, the pair collapsed back onto Anita’s bed. Cruella stared in a dazed way at the wall past Anita, who was no longer white but sorely flushed, and snatched the bottle up off the floor.  
“Oh Cruella… I’m so sorry.” Anita put a hand over her mouth as she started to grimace through her tears.  
Cruella took a low swing from the bottle and offered it gingerly, but Anita shook her head. Placing it somewhat reluctantly behind her, Cruella out a low breath and said nothing for a minute. Then carefully, she placed a hand on Anita’s knee. “I love it.”  
Anita continued to tremble as Cruella got to her feet, and blinked at her through swollen eyes. “What?”  
“I love it” Looking again in the mirror, Cruella threw a challenging smile over her shoulder. “It’s Fashion, Darling. What a splendid job you’ve done.”  
“But Cruella, I-”  
“Where are the showers?”

* * *

Anita’s pen paused mid sentence as she heard everyone around her draw breath. The lecture hall was at once rippling with barely stifled murmurs. A smile flickered across Anita’s face as she realised she was the only person still looking at Dr Danvers, who was vainly trying to recapture the classes attention.  
Turning in her seat, Anita met Cruella’s eyes almost straight away. She had just entered the back of the hall and surveyed the assembled students before her like a Duchess. She was wearing her white suede coat and blouse with the pinstriped skirt, and her hair was perfectly arranged in a bouffant both black, and pearly white.  
Blinking once at Anita with the manic of smiles, she walking calmly past her audience and took her usual seat at the front of the lecture hall.  
“Do you see that? She’s clearly insane.” the girl next to Anita whispered in her ear. Dr Danver had decided to plow on with her lecture as the students made an apathetic attempt at composure.  
Anita turned to a new page in her notebook. “Don’t you like it?” she turned to look the girl full in the face. “I should think it’s very high fashion.”  
The girl in question turned a blunt shade of pink and muttered “No I don’t. She’ll never keep it anyway.”  
“Perhaps not” Anita gave another glance in Cruella’s direction. The back of her dual-tone head raised elegantly above her neck and shoulders, divided by a line of silk buttons.  
‘Perhaps not.’ she thought to herself again. But she glowed a little in knowledge that Cruella had made it look beautiful for her sake... for as long as it would last.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a quick exploration of the Cruellanita dynamics and something of a 'return to writing' warmup! I've never written for this ship before, and I'm looking forward to exploring the dynamics further. Please do let me know what you think of the tone.


End file.
